Kirk Killing Suspect in Custody
Waiting for news about the arrested suspect in the murder of Charlie Kirk.
As we were preparing to send this newsletter, Donald Trump made a surprise announcement during a morning appearance on the Fox & Friends couch: Law enforcement believes it has apprehended the assassin who shot Charlie Kirk on Wednesday. Reporting now emerging suggests that the killer confessed to his father, who alerted law enforcement.
This piece of news is obviously still developing; as we send this, FBI Director Kash Patel is preparing to hold a news conference. We’re sure we’ll have lots more to say about it in the hours and days ahead. Happy Friday.
Waiting for News
by Andrew Egger
There’s a lot still to say about Charlie Kirk’s killing and its aftermath. We’ll hear a great deal more about the suspect over the next twenty-four hours. As always in these cases, what will come out at first will be a mix of reporting, speculation, and error. It’s never a bad idea to wait for solid confirmation of anything you hear—especially the bits that might happen to flatter your political priors.
Meanwhile, the public debate over Kirk’s life and legacy will continue. I was struck yesterday by the sight of Republican policymakers holding Kirk up as a champion of free speech while at the same time using his death to call for state crackdowns on the speech of others. Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau called for Americans to report “foreigners” who were “praising, rationalizing, or making light of” Kirk’s assassination to the State Department, presumably for visa cancellation and deportation. Not to be outdone, Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.) declared political war on the “evil, sick animals” who “belittled” Kirk’s assassination: “I’m . . . going after their business licenses and permitting, their businesses will be blacklisted aggressively, they should be kicked from every school, and their drivers licenses should be revoked.” Any bill to this effect would obviously be unconstitutional, but we’ll wait and see whether Higgins actually tries to write one, or whether threatening to do so is just a particularly unfortunate way for certain people to grieve.
As for the social-media discourse around Kirk’s death, the less said about it the better—except to reiterate that social media has proven itself many times over to be a tremendously poisonous forum for handling any emotionally charged subject in politics. I’ve been trying to keep to JVL’s recommendation this week on the subject: “When you see people being neither wise, prudent, nor charitable—and you will—pray that they are given grace and offer them yours as a down payment.”
A Hero We Didn’t Deserve
by William Kristol
Murder is wrong. The murder of Charlie Kirk was wrong. One should not even have to say this obvious truth, but we live in a time when “the restatement of the obvious,” as George Orwell wrote, is our “first duty.”
Charlie Kirk was a controversial public figure, with admirers and critics. I was a critic. I remain critical of much that he said and did. And—I do not say but, I say and—I denounce his killing without equivocation or reservation, and offer condolences to his family and friends.
There are too many murders in today’s America. A month ago, another young man was taken from us, also in his early thirties, also with a wife and two young children. His name was David Rose.
David Rose was the DeKalb County police officer who rushed to the Centers for Disease Control campus in Atlanta when employees there were under attack from a gunman who believed he had been poisoned by the COVID-19 vaccine. David Rose had served as a Marine in Afghanistan, and then decided to serve here at home in law enforcement.
When he graduated from the police academy this past March, Rose, as the class leader, addressed the graduates and guests. “From the very first day,” he said, “we learned that policing isn’t just about enforcing the law. It’s about protecting the vulnerable, standing for justice, and being the person who runs towards danger when others run away.”
David Rose ran towards danger, and gave his life in doing so.
Officer Rose received some well deserved recognition at the time of his death, though not as much it seemed to me as was warranted. For example, so far as I can tell, President Trump never praised him by name or called his family to offer condolences.
But it’s a free country. And while we all agree that murder is wrong, we won’t all agree about which of our fellow citizens deserve special notice or public praise, either in life or in death. Charlie Kirk was a prominent participant in our public discourse, and an important ally of our current president. So it’s natural that his shocking and awful death has been the focus of so much attention. And not just here in the United States. The man who comes as close as anyone to being Vladimir Putin’s court philosopher, the fascist polemicist Alexander Dugin, weighed in with an essay: “Who Killed Charlie Kirk? From Utah to Ukraine: one global war.”
But let us leave the deplorable Dugin aside. Yesterday was a day on which we Americans quite properly considered the life and legacy of Charlie Kirk. But it was also September 11. One’s thoughts turned to those who were killed on that terrible day. But September 11, 2001, was a day not just of tragedy but of heroism. And so one remembered also those who, in New York and Washington and aboard Flight 93, ran heroically toward danger. And my thoughts turned also to David Rose, who volunteered to try to prevent another such attack on our country, and then, when back home, ran toward danger once again to help his fellow Americans.
“Let us now praise famous men,” as the old saying goes. Let us also praise men like David Rose.
AROUND THE BULWARK
The Fallout from Charlie Kirk’s Murder… In a livestream last night, TIM, SARAH, and WILL SOMMER discussed the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s murder: the facts, the political impact, the online right’s reaction, and what it all means going forward.
Chuck Around. Find Out. In The Opposition, LAUREN EGAN asks: Can Schumer lead the Democrats through the coming shutdown fight?
Republicans Still Have Media Subscriptions MAGA Claimed Were Payoffs… In Press Pass, JOE PERTICONE takes a look back at Republicans’ outrage over pricey news subscriptions they secretly kept buying themselves.
Quick Hits
JUSTICE FOR A COUPSTER: Here’s an oddly familiar-sounding story: In 2022, Brazil’s right-wing president, Jair Bolsonaro, plotted a coup to remain in power after losing his bid for re-election. Here’s a divergence, however: Yesterday, Bolsonaro, who maintained his innocence throughout, was convicted by Brazil’s Supreme Court for his role in those plots and sentenced to twenty-seven years in prison. The New York Times reports:
Mr. Bolsonaro’s conviction relied upon troves of evidence showing that he and his inner circle had spent months undermining voters’ confidence in Brazil’s elections systems and then, after narrowly losing the 2022 vote, attempted to find ways to keep him in power.
The plans envisaged declaring a state of emergency that would have dissolved the Supreme Court, annulled the election result and given the military sweeping powers. It also included a plot to assassinate Mr. Bolsonaro’s opponent, now the president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva; Mr. Lula’s running mate; and Alexandre de Moraes, the Supreme Court justice who had overseen the election and launched several investigations into Mr. Bolsonaro.
One thing that remains to be seen: how Trump will react. The president has long raged against Bolsonaro’s prosecution—you sort of wonder why that is—and has treated it as the most salient fact in U.S.-Brazil relations. Back in July, Trump explicitly pegged his sky-high 50 percent tariff rate on Brazilian goods to the ongoing prosecution of Bolsonaro.
On Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt suggested the administration might be willing to go even further: “The president is unafraid to use the economic might, the military might, of the United States to protect free speech around the world.”
OVER THE NATO LINE: Our understandable preoccupation with political violence at home has largely buried what would otherwise be an alarm-bells geopolitical story this week: Russia’s launch of 19 drones into Polish territory during a seven-hour span Wednesday. The drones, most of which were shot down, were reportedly unarmed surveillance or decoy drones, and Russia denied any incursion had taken place at all. But European leaders denounced the flyover as deliberate. The AP reports:
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer spoke about the incursion with French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz on Thursday.
Starmer’s office said that it “was clear that Russia was continuing to ramp up its aggression, systematically stepping up its attacks through a campaign of increasingly belligerent actions.” The German government said it will “extend and expand air policing over Poland.”
Trump’s initial response, posted to Truth Social late Thursday morning, was surreally cryptic: “What’s with Russia violating Poland’s airspace with drones? Here we go!” Asked for further comment by a reporter yesterday, Trump said that the incursion “could have been a mistake,” but that he’s “not happy about anything having to do with that whole situation.” Well, that clears things up.
Cheap Shots
Here was Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on July 30:
We regret to announce, however, that the Trump economy has since been POSTPONED. Here was Lutnick this week:
Thank you for writing about David Rose and for acknowledging 9/11.
Andrew: "Any bill to this effect would obviously be unconstitutional, but we’ll wait and see whether Higgins actually tries to write one, or whether threatening to do so is just a particularly unfortunate way for certain people to grieve."
What is this Constitution that you're referring to and what evidence is there that Higgins cares about it?
The truth is in 2025, the Congress is just another division of the Trump family business, and Higgins is just another knuckledragging buttonman. He's not in Congress to legislate. He's there to do what the Boss says, or to shitpost on X.